Archive for April, 2013

“Sony 4K RED 4K but is everything OK? Well it’s not up to us to decide that question right now so we are just going to leave this here for you to run your peeps over.The snapshot of the piece is that it is about the history or more importantly the rewriting of 4K history.”

Sony… get real.

It appears that Sony is now attempting to re-write history and be the champion of 4K.

Re-writing history isn’t going to happen because I am personally not going to let it happen. Let’s get this one straight. RED… 4K delivery. Period.

What are the facts?

Sony developed the Genesis digital camera (with Panavision as the frontman) in their best effort to replace film with digital. Just ask John Gault. It was a 1080P camera. RGB codec.

After the Genesis, Sony released the F-23 Digital Cinema Camera (without Panavision). It was still 1080P. And it recorded RGB to an SR deck. It was $225K+. This was the best that Sony had to offer the cinema industry. The RED ONE (4K) was less than $20K at that time.“

“If you’re interested in cinematography and colour, then it’s worth taking a look at moviesincolor.com by @RoxyMakesThings. Great work!”

A blog featuring stills from films and their corresponding color palettes. A tool to promote learning and inspiration. Updated daily.

“Movies In Color is curated and created by graphic designer Roxy Radulescu (RoxyMakesThings).

The idea started when I was watching Skyfall. I was taken with the cinematography and use of color more-so than the story itself. I wanted to find out what colors made up certain stills and after making a few color palettes for Skyfall, took it a step further by extending it to all films and starting a blog.

So far, the blog has not only been an aesthetic pursuit but also an educational pursuit that showcases the relationship between color, cinematography, set design, and production design. Overall, it is a study of color in films, but has other uses and applications. One of the goals is to give artists color palettes they can use in paintings, films, videos, graphic design, and other pursuits.

The Process. Research is first. I search for stills that are compositionally interesting as well as rich in color. I use the help of a color generator to get a very basic range of swatches. Then I piece together the general palette from that and other colors I think are prominent or worth including from the still. It’s all done in Photoshop to keep layout and swatch sizes consistent and to facilitate color sampling from the image.”

“Canon has announced a new firmware update – Version 1.2.1 – for the EOS 5D Mark III DSLR, which includes features for enhanced shooting and improved video workflow, is now available to download. Details of the exact firmware fixes and improvements are shown below…

EOS 5D Mark III firmware version 1.2.1Firmware Version 1.2.1 for the EOS 5D Mark III incorporates the following improvements and fixes:”

“Few filmmakers announce their retirement from making films at or near the peak of their careers, but Steven Soderbergh isn’t just any filmmaker. A prolific filmmaker by any definition (roughly 30 films over three-plus decades), Soderbergh announced his retirement more than a year ago. Since then, MAGIC MIKE opened to commercial and critical success, while his last film, SIDE EFFECTS, opened to disappointing box-office numbers (more about both later on). It was something of a bold decision then for Ted Hope, the new executive director of the San Francisco International Film Festival, to ask Soderbergh to give the festival’s yearly State of Cinema address. Members of the audience were understandably primed to hear Soderbergh discuss not just cinema in the abstract, but why he’s chosen to stop making films. In both regards, Soderbergh didn’t disappoint.”

“Acclaim is a web tool that makes it extremely easy for video creators and their clients to collaborate on video projects. That means no more lengthy, ambiguous emails and no slow file transfers. Just actionable comments so projects get done! After being in private beta for 2 months, Acclaim is now open to everyone!”

“Always wondered, how a Scarlet and expensive cineglass holds up against a BMC and pretty affordable lenses?Is the difference – that is almost as huge as the price for a new car – really that big?Felix Patzke of Heimspiel and I where also curious, so we did a little shootout. Here comes part one.

The setup was pretty simple.

We wanted a realworldish scenario, so we used mixed daylight and tungsten, a high dynamic range with dark and light materials, for the indoor shot and a scene with high detail for the outdoor shot. We did not light or shot for the chart in particular, but just placed it in the middle of the scene for reference and as a focus point.

We had the lovely set of Zeiss SuperSpeeds from Felix and I threw in the Samyang glass. On top of that – and just for shits and giggles – we had some more exotic lenses like vintage Angenieux and Kino Precision zooms. The Super Speeds ranged for 18, 25, 35, 50 and 80 millimeters and the Samyang where the 24, 35 and 85 millimeter.”

“This is the home to the NeedCreative Podcast, produced by Anticipate Media. It’s not a blog, it’s a radio show, published online, where we discuss all matters creativity. The NeedCreative podcast is listened to in over 80 countries around the globe, and has quickly become a key resource for visualmakers to learn how to enhance their art. Anticipate Media not only creates art – we network with the world to find the best who do as well.

You can also look at the last few issues of show notes below (which include direct links to the latest audio files for the show), view the entire historical/raw feed via feedburner here (where you can also use your own podcast/news aggregator) or send your show feedback. And you can subscribe to an email version of the feed to the right as well, to get these notes regularly.